Memory was portrayed accurately in "Inside Out," and one aspect was that of memory retention. Children's brains often haven't developed enough to retain all memories, which is why adults often can't recall many specific childhood memories.
The Atlantic recently reported on a study that debunks the myth of memory retention and "infant amnesia."
"People used to think that the reason that we didn't have early memories was because children didn't have a memory system or they were unable to remember things, but it turns out that's not the case," said Carole Peterson, a professor of psychology who studies children's memories. "Children have a very good memory system. But whether or not something hangs around long-term depends on several other factors."
Two of the most crucial factors in remembering something long-term, said Peterson, are whether memories have emotion infused in them and whether or not the memory is coherent, or makes sense when we think of it later, the Atlantic wrote.
Steven Reznick, a developmental psychologist echoed the same idea, and added that it takes complicated mental infrastructure to recall the past, as opposed to other kinds of memory, like episodic memory, which is the best way to explain infant amnesia.
It isn't that infants and small children cannot remember much, it is that the development of the brain is still organizing itself and helping the child associate different things with what happens in memories, wrote Nicholas Day, for Slate.
"What's happening with the baby is that a lot of the information is escaping even as the baby is trying to get it organized and stabilized," Day wrote. Two years old is when the organization and the processing of information starts making memories out of experiences.
"Inside Out" also portrayed how memories — and the emotions associated with them — can change. If Sadness touches a happy memory, in the movie, the mood of that recollection will permanently change.
"They took a concept that is absolutely true in terms of how memories work. When we retrieve a memory, we bring it back to life, and that will change the way it's restored," said Daphna Shohamy, a researcher at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute.
"They took that idea and used it in a way I thought was beautiful and accurate and incredibly helpful, from an educational standpoint … when you bring a memory back from storage and something from the present touches it, that can change the memory," she said, according to an article by Vulture.
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